Planning on beans (for drying) for next year

[Two_Sheds]

(Hi TS )

Sorry, I've been out all day brambling. The others have looked after you though

thinking of borlotto, kidney, yin yang (never had these before), haricot, and a butter bean.

Canadian Wonder is "the best" red kidney bean (all the others are kidneys too y'know)
Yin Yang is iffy for me: I find it hard to germinate and even harder to ripen
White Emergo is a good "butter" bean (although it's a runner really), but it does need a long growing season to mature

PM me for seeds

once the pods are dried out, is it just a matter of putting them in an airtight container, or do they need washing first?

If you wash 'em, they won't be dry anymore . No, the beans inside will be clean, they don't need washing, just thorough drying

No difference between tall and dwarf beans. Apart from yield.

There are differences between the types too: most of my dwarf/bush beans are stingy with yield, except Black Valentine & my other new favourite, Roquencourt: loaded with beans they are

Do they start to rot/break down when they're getting past it?)

They'll only rot if you haven't dried them properly

[Jeanied]

On the subject of borlottis - I'd recommend climbing every time - the dwarf variety were just not very productive for me but all my climbing beans have romped away.

[chris]

Thank you both, I'll drop you a PM TS thanks - I like it around 'ere

[jacob]

and pintos for chilis for example

Hey! Where do you get pinto seed from? I've looked and failed to find...

[LolaLou]

Not sure about where to get pinto's from but this is my first year for drying bean seeds - I've got Borlottos - the climbing variety - and they are producing tons of beans and Cornetti Meraviglia di Venezia (a yellow climbing french bean) which failed miserably but more down to me, not the seeds! The part I initially couldn't get my head round was that if I wasn't picking the bean pods off, surely the plant wouldn't produce any more (I'd only grown runner beans before - so had the pick 'em regular to get a high yield words stuck in my head). Well, after some good advice from this forum of guru's I went for it and have half a huge jar full of beans already and still have a good 100+ pods on the lottie waiting to dry. I also took some 'wet' Borlotto beans and froze them and then took a donation from my neighbour who had let his frenchies get too fat for eating as pods, and I'd never have gone for it before but they are now in my freezer waiting for the winter and to be added to a lovely chilli or soup! It is addictive though....I'm already eyeing up Roquencourt on the recommendation from TS to add next year and a purple variety...and maybe a kidney bean.....and....I have to stop, I don't have the room to grow them all!!!

[northepaul]

I grew cherokee and serbian beans - recomended by the vine. Not bad for lots of pods on a small amount of plants. I also did acouple of borlottis (as they are my favourite dried bean) but these got eaten by mice I think.
I grew some runners which were good but not that prolific.
Next year I am in two minds whether to do just borlotti beans...

[zazen999]

Hey! Where do you get pinto seed from? I've looked and failed to find...

Not sure about where to get pinto's from

Mine were from the supermarket...in the dried pulses section.

[Two_Sheds]

I grew ...serbian beans - recomended by the vine.

These are my most prolific beans (originally from Flummery); I am gutted that I seem not to have grown any this year (but lots of Tiger Eye, another very prolific, very attractive bean)

I'm already eyeing up Roquencourt

It's a brilliant bean: dwarf, but holds its bean up off the soil, and oodles of pods. Beautiful black seeds (the bit I like). PM me for seeds

[jacob]

Mine were from the supermarket...in the dried pulses section.

There's always that! I guess I'm really after a super-hardy, highly prolific, grows in the frozen north variety...

[Two_Sheds]

I'm really after a super-hardy, highly prolific, grows in the frozen north variety...

Grow a selection next year: save seed from your best plants. Do this every year and you'll end up with your own super beans

[northepaul]

It's a brilliant bean: dwarf, but holds its bean upright off the soil, and oodles of pods. Beautiful black seeds (the bit I like). PM me for seeds

I grew a few dwarf borlottis though and the problem I found was that because the pods were lower, something ate them, whereas the taller pole beans were fine.
It might be worth considering.

[jacob]

Grow a selection next year: save seed from your best plants. Do this every year and you'll end up with your own super beans

I really want to do this, but haven't yet summoned up the confidence, maybe next year!

[Hazel at the Hill]

I really want to do this, but haven't yet summoned up the confidence, maybe next year!

This is easy for the lazy gardener (me) - when you get round to clearing the bean patch (in - say - November) there will be a few giant bean pods that you have forgotton/missed/neglected - stick these in the spare room/attic/garage and even half a dozen pods will yield a couple of dozen beauts for next sowing.

Perfect.

[chriscross1966]

This year I grew quite a lot of beans for shelling out... as a veggie I eat a lot of them anyway so i knew they'd get used... some thoughts below:

Manitoba Purple Mennonite Stripe (Climbing). Very early, massive beans in huge pods, low yielding though and a sod to dry in our damp summers cos the pod is so fleshy.

Marvel of Venice (Climbing). OK Cannellini type but later and lower yielding than Blue Lake

Polish Climbing. A smaller earlier slightly lower yielding Borlotti is the best way to describe it

Birds Egg (Climbing) Similar to Polish, but the beans area bit bigger and it's a bit later.

Bridgewater: (Climbing) Similar to Polish but a bit later with a heavier yield.

Box (Cl). Lovely red/white Bi-colour bean like Yin-yang or pea-beans. A chunk earlier than pea-beans.

San Antonio (CL) Late season, only borlottis and Lima left when these finished. Decent yield af very large beans (the only bigger french type was Mennonite Stripe)

Cherokee Trail of Tears (Cl) easy to see what the fuss was about cos it does taste good, but it's quite late didn't yield as well as most of the of others and it seems to have more crop-rot problems when drying ou too.

Egyptian Pea-Beans (Cl): Hard to distinguish from Box but is a bit later and slightly heavier yiellding. Threw interesting sport, see below.

Blue Lake (Cl): The surprise in the pack, turns out to be a brilliant canellini, decent yields, nice and early, and available in your local GC rather than from shady street-corner seed-swappers

Borlotti (Cl) Big crop, later than nearly all the other climbers, needs to go in a bit earlier than I managed this year I think. Don't remember them being this late last year.

Soldier (Dwarf). Very early, nice large beans, but like the other early dwarfs yield isn't great.

Ernie's Big Eye (Dw) Handsome large bean and very early, though yield not massive.

Yin-Yang (Dw). Grew well from self-saved seeds, good yield, later than Soldier or Ernies but not disastrously so. Striking bean is good eating too.

Black Pencil-pod Wax. (Dw)..Another "fish out of water"., Heavy though late yield of good black beans, not quite as tasty as CToT. Well worth doing if you fancy dipping a toe though, once again available in GC's I believe.

Lima (Dw) Late, decent yields, gorgeous bean, but latest of all the dwarfs. Like Borlotti, probably needed to go out a month earlier, maybe with some protection.

Giganda: Lives up to the name. massive plant, massive pods, massive beans. late but heavy yielding, still going down on its wigwam even now. I should have plaanted out earlier with protection and started stopping out the flowers earlier than I did, it's still trying to flower now, so needs more attention than most.


The interesting sport I found in amongst my pea-beans was a plant that yielded black pods with black seeds rather than the green-going-yellow pods of red/white bicolours.I hypothesise that i'm looking at a dominant melanic gene mutation. With care I should be able to stabilise that at the F2 generation (in two years time) and if so then I name the variety Crosskey's Nubian Pea-Bean, I'm enough of an egomaniac to want my name on it and Nubia was the African kingdom/empire that really gave Ancient Egypt a hard time on their southern border for much of their history.

chrisc

[womble]

Excellent post chris.

I have the same problems with drying Trail of tears, the pods take absolutely ages to dry. I also had the same problem with Blue lake.

My Trail of tears have yielded amazingly this year, they started very early and looked like they had stopped, but then found new legs and have been producing again. The beans are starting to get a bit tough now though, but we're still eating them, we started eating them on the 20th of July.